From Married...with Children to Futurama and Sons of Anarchy, Katey Sagal has spent more than 26 years mastering almost every genre on the small screen. To think, she was once told she wasn't cut out for television. Here, to round out our Women in TV coverage, she talks to ELLE.com about her iconic career.

ELLE: You came from a low-key showbiz family. How did you make your own way in television?

Katey Sagal: My father was a director, and he used to always tell me, "You should be an actress." When I was 17, he gave me a job so that I'd be in the union. It was a TV movie he directed in 1971 called The Failing of Raymond, starring Dean Stockwell. I think I had one or two lines. Whatever it was, it was enough to get me in the union. I went on some auditions—these were the days of Dallas and Dynasty, where everybody looked super-glamorous—and I was told, "Stick to the stage, because you're never working in television." So I ended up doing a musical some friends of mine wrote, and one day an agent came to this little, grubby theater and she said to me, "Do you want an agent?" I went along with it, and within six months I was in a big play called The Beautiful Lady. And then I was asked to come read for a sitcom on CBS—I still don't understand why, because The Beautiful Lady was a rock opera about Russian poets. The sitcom was Mary. Danny DeVito was the director. Mary Tyler Moore was the star. I was this complete nobody and I got the job. Six months after it ended [in 1986], I got Married...with Children.

ELLE: There's a story that you showed up to the audition in what would become Peggy Bundy's full getup—red bouffant and all. Is that true?

KS: Well, I didn't get to wear Peggy's red wig until after two seasons of Married...with Children. They wouldn't spring for it, because we were on this network that nobody even knew about. But for my audition I ratted up my hair and wore these cat glasses, high heels, and a housedress. That informed the kind of housewife she was—she wasn't doing any housework in those heels—and the writers were cool with it. I always thought she should be sexy, so I sexed her up. She was written to be more slovenly and sort of dumpy. I thought, Oh, no, no, no. She has to be hot, because there has to be some reason they're together. I always just thought that at some point they'd had good sex.

ELLE: What was your favorite Peggy shtick?

KS: Before I quit smoking, I did love that she smoked and cooked at the same time—she smoked and did everything. It was a great prop for her. So I liked that.

ELLE: Were they real cigarettes? Or the herbal kind the Smoking Man sucked down on The X-Files?

KS: Oh, yeah, those were the days when you could really smoke cigarettes on television. It was disgusting.

ELLE: The show elicited some strong reactions from viewers.

KS: Yes, people were very vocal about certain things on the show. It was racist. It was sexist. It was everything you were not supposed to talk about. But what was most surprising to me was how many people related to it, in a way. They would tell me, "My family is just like that!" In terms of my own opinions about what was going on, I didn't feel that there was anything as an actor I couldn't do. Was it necessarily my belief system? No. I think people started to take it too serious—like that one woman who tried to get us taken off the air, which did nothing but boost our ratings. It all spoke to censorship and parental responsibility. You know, if you don't want your kids to watch something, keep an eye on what they watch and turn the channel. Don't make it so that we—as artists, as entertainers—can't do something.

ELLE: Was playing broad, sometimes risqué comedy as cathartic as they say?

KS: Oh, it was fantastic. I mean, you know, when they say laughter is healing, it absolutely is the truth. Ed O'Neil used to make me fall down laughing. I had that job for 11 years, and I went through a lot of stuff in my life, as anybody would over an 11-year period. Going to set was always a great release.

ELLE: You suffered a miscarriage during the series—after your pregnancy had been written into the show. The writers wrote off the pregnancy as a dream. What was it like at work in those days?

KS: We were all freaked out. I thought telling the story as a dream was the only way to handle it. It was really, really hard to have all that happen in the public eye. But the cast and crew and writer were so sensitive—they gave me as much time as I needed before I came back to work. I came back within the month. I wanted to go back. Then I ended up having both my older kids during the show's run.

ELLE: When Sons of Anarchy came out, the Hollywood Reporter said it's impossible to imagine that you ever played Peggy Bundy. What did it feel like to suddenly kind of be expunged of something you were known for for so long?

KS: That was really nice, actually. It was hard to change people's perception. The first step out of it was when I did 8 Simple Rules with John Ritter. The network really hesitated in hiring us because we were both so well known as other characters. But they took the risk. Heartbreak of heartbreaks what happened with John.

ELLE: When was the first time someone recognized you for a character other than Peggy?

KS: Oh, well, that's happened a lot over the years. I've been doing [Matt Groening's sci-fi cartoon] Futurama for a long time. People recognize my character Leela all the time—or rather, her voice. I don't look like Peggy, so I'd be standing at a supermarket checkout and talking to the cashier, then he'd look up and say, Leela?

ELLE: You play Gemma, the fiercely protective—and a touch sociopathic—matriarch of a motorcycle gang, in FX's Sons of Anarchy, which recently aired its fourth season. Your husband, the show's creator, Kurk Sutter, wrote the part for you. Have you talked about how you inspired the character?

KS: Yeah, we talked about. You know, I have three kids, and I've always been very protective of them. So I think the themes of family and loyalty that run through Gemma—that's her main motivation—and she'll go to any length to protect those she loves. Those were definitely inspired by my love and loyalty to my own family. That's what Kurt would say. Now, she is a hard-ass. She lives a little differently than I do.

ELLE: Do your kids get excited about their parents' projects?

KS: They grew up kind of like how I did. It's all so normal to them; it doesn't thrill or excite them necessarily—except when I won the Golden Globe. That was awesome, because I brought them with me. And the most fun part we had was when we went to the party, and I'm walking around with my Golden Globe, and we would walk up to all kinds of people that I probably wouldn't have had the balls to talk to. But because I had them—and that little statue in my hands—we did.

ELLE: With shows like Sons of Anarchy, Damages, and American Horror Story, actresses over 50 are just killing it on TV. Why do you think the medium bucks Hollywood convention with so many roles for women over 40, 50, and beyond?

KS: I think that at this time of my life, in my mid-fifties, I feel better and healthier than I ever have. And I think that television mirrors what's in the world, and the reason people are watching women in their mid-fifties is because a lot of those women feel great and have different, interesting stories to tell. That's how I'd like to look at it. The hard part about being at this age in the film world is that there are fewer parts and so many great actresses. In television, there just seems to be more parts. Lucky for me, boy.